Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Get your free solar estimate online today at boardgoshenergy.ie and use the code HG500 for 500 euros off your solar install. Welcome to the Tools at Hand podcast. My name is Harrison Gardner, and today I've got with me Isolt Ward. Isolt is the co-founder and CEO of FoodCloud, a social enterprise that she started with Yvonne O'Brien while they were students at Trinity.
Chapter 2: What inspired Iseult Ward to start FoodCloud?
Since 2013, FoodCloud has redistributed the equivalent of over 400 million meals. connecting surplus food from retailers and food businesses to charities and community groups across Ireland, the UK and beyond. In 2024 alone, they rescued 15 million euros worth of food. In my opinion, it's one of the most exciting businesses that's been built in Ireland in the last few years.
And I'm really grateful that you came in.
Oh, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.
Maybe we could start with a little bit of an origin story of you right before you started Food Cloud. What was the moment right before Food Cloud came into being that you were feeling the things that you were feeling and I guess the problem that you were trying to solve?
I was a student in Trinity at the time, as you said, and I was studying business and economics. And I really enjoyed the degree I was doing. And then it was just before coming into third year that I started reading about the concept of social enterprise.
And this really appealed to me, being able to apply what I'd been learning about business and economics, but in a setting where you're prioritizing social and environmental impact.
Yeah.
And serendipitously, I'll say, then there was an event organized for students to go along to under this organization called Enactus to learn more about social enterprise. So I decided to go along to this and it was at that event that I met Even and she pitched...
This idea around surplus food redistribution, she'd been working in London and had seen across the UK initiatives focused on this idea where you rescue surplus food. So food that is excess, still perfectly good food, but is destined to go to waste. You rescue that and you redistribute it into communities.
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Chapter 3: How does FoodCloud address food waste in Ireland?
So the food gets called processing plant, I suppose, after a farm.
Well, even before that, once the food is harvested by the machinery, it'll be graded. So it'll be graded into like grade A, which would be retail. Then you'll have grade B, C. And if you were shopping in a supermarket, you know, you rarely see a forked carrot or a broken carrot or a wonky carrot. And that's where the grading comes in.
So that already then will, some food will end up going to animal feed. In that case, and really, you know, food that's grown for humans should go for human consumption, ideally. Like animal feed is better than waste, but humans eating the food is even better. And then after that, you go to manufacturing and... There's a lot of different reasons like overproduction.
So often just to make sure that they don't underproduce, because if you underproduce, there could be an economic loss for the producer and there are tight margins in the food industry. So often people may produce intentionally 10% extra food just in case something goes wrong.
Makes sense. And they have quotas they've got to meet and I'm sure suppliers expect to get the right amount from them and they've got to keep that all good.
So there you've got some inbuilt kind of systems that create a level of waste. Then you can have things that go wrong. So there might be a mistake in the production line. Sometimes things can go wrong in the labeling and the packaging and it would be too expensive and not viable for them to relabel and repackage it again.
Hmm.
So at each stage, you can find different reasons. The food then goes into a supermarket and you'll often, I'm sure lots of people are aware of the reduced to clear oil that you see in Tesco supermarket or other supermarkets now. And that's food that is still perfectly good. Any of us can purchase it and consume it that day or freeze it down and use it at a later date.
But they won't be able to sell that the next day.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does surplus food distribution face?
20 cent. But actually, there's a much greater cost that we didn't realize. And that is the environmental and the social impact that that food, the negative environmental impact and the loss of the potential positive social impact that could have been created by rescuing that food. So I think that's that was a huge piece of education that we had to do in the early days.
But I will say now there is a much stronger awareness of We used to have to start every conversation explaining that food waste happened, that it was a problem, that it created this negative impact. Now we can skip all of that. And it's really just convincing people that this is the right thing to do and it's easy and it's safe and it's, you know, a beautiful thing to get involved with.
Yeah, absolutely. And I really appreciate the idea that you're trying to make it as easy as possible for food to leave waste streams and to find a home somewhere. And I guess I want to ask...
is there a danger of when when you give a path out of it obviously the problem is further back in the line that we're creating too much food we've built this system that there is all this surplus if it was more scarce we would we would not be so free with it right and is there a danger of enabling overproduction if we create these systems maybe that doesn't matter because in the end if it's not going to waste then that's a good thing do you know what i mean
I absolutely do. So first of all, prevention should be the priority. We should prevent food going to waste. Inevitably, given the global food system that we all currently are part of, there will be some waste by design. And it is really important that we have very good, robust solutions for redistribution so that when that does occur, we can redistribute the surplus food.
But prevention should be the priority. And really, I think what we have seen is often businesses, by donating their food, actually become more aware of the food that is in this stream within their operations and then proactively start to reduce it because it's better for business. It is better for them from a cost point of view if they actually don't create the waste to begin with.
So we do see a lot of actions like that. where businesses will be donating a certain volume and over time that reduces.
And really our role then is to continuously find new businesses to bring on and make sure that we are working with a wide variety of different businesses and that we're always bringing more and more businesses on board so that the volume that we're redistributing to charities can at least stay consistent if not grow.
It is a constant balancing act, but we do have to make sure that we do promote prevention as well. And it's also important that there are many different types of solutions that are tackling the food waste problem, not just food redistribution. So you'll often see different organisations setting up around helping businesses to
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Chapter 5: How does gleaning work in food redistribution?
It's all part of it. So the technology, we developed our own bespoke technology that enables businesses to very easily donate their food to communities. It allows them to trace the food, which is really important for food safety. It allows them to make the interaction between them and the local community seamless so they can notify the community, the community partner can accept it or reject it.
And it's really kind of streamlining that process. But at the end of the day, it's the human connection that happens at the very end that makes it possible. possible and sustains it. And it's those relationships where so many more brilliant things actually come from. So when people start sharing food within a community, it's a brilliant foundation for strong relationships.
And you'll often see that the businesses and the charities that are working together within these communities through food redistribution we'll end up doing so much more together because of the relationships they establish. And it's one of the things that I love about our work in Food Cloud, that every day we're creating thousands of these connections.
And these connections are founded on sharing food. And that's something that's very special. And I think what we find from You know, we work with large multinational retailers like Tesco. But within the Tesco store, it's a local person that's there and working in the store.
And they have thoughts and feelings about all this stuff they interact with as well.
And every day then they're interacting with somebody in their local charity to donate this food. And they might know that person because it's all within one local community.
Hmm.
So it is, I think it's that it's really, it's a global solution in terms of the impact that we're having, but it's really driven by local people and what's happening within local communities. And the technology is really important to enable that because We can track donations happening across five countries, thousands of them, all within the space of a few hours.
And it's really important for data, for food safety, that we can see all of that. But we know what's really happening on the ground is what's really special. And it's all of those connections.
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Chapter 6: What role does technology play in FoodCloud's operations?
So I don't think there is a strong enough awareness around the problem, the complexity, the systems that are, you know, in some ways reinforcing a lot of these problems for people. But also, I think there is fantastic work being done by community partners across the country. And I think...
providing food is definitely a strong tool that helps with the support that can really benefit people within communities.
Absolutely. I mean, food is just such a part of being human and connecting with each other and feeling safe and secure, you know, even just in ourselves.
And
for most of us, if we're three hours past the time we were expecting to eat, things can get very ropey and we can get very short and we can make really bad decisions and have really bad interactions.
Absolutely. And I think like if you're worrying about where your next meal is going to come from or where your kid's next meal is going to come from, you probably have a very long list of worries. And if we can play a small role in in alleviating that worry. You know, I think it's a really valuable thing that we can do.
And doing that through community partners who understand their communities, who understand the needs of their communities, is a really great way to deliver that type of support. And I think we work with over 600 different community partners across the country and they really do understand the needs of their communities.
And I think that local support and that local understanding can be really beneficial when you're delivering support.
um support to people and understanding the complexity the problems that people are really facing um i think comes well when it's from that very local um community yeah it's not a it's not a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone it's going to be tailored to different parts of the country different communities different backgrounds all these all these things and
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Chapter 7: How does FoodCloud ensure food safety and quality?
We also have other services. We even have a food truck and a kitchen. So for us, having about 50% of our income comes from services that would be seen as more commercial, still all very impact led.
Sure.
And then our income comes from philanthropy and grants as well. And it was actually a charity who said it to me in our very early days that I said, you know, would you sign up to get the surplus food? And they said, look, we love what you're doing and we love the idea.
But honestly, one of my fears is that you'll set up, you'll run it for a year, we'll become reliant on you and then you'll be gone and I'll be left with a hole in my budget, which will be very difficult to recover from. And he said, that's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to get involved right now.
And it did make us realize at a very early stage, the responsibility that we were taking on, that if we did this, we had to do it in a way that was financially sustainable and responsible, we had to approach growth in a way that was more probably risk averse than a commercial entity would because we couldn't grow the organization if it put any of our existing work in any way in risk.
Yeah.
So that mindset, I think, was always really important. And one of the great things about a social enterprise model is it does mitigate that risk around financial sustainability because a lot of organizations that are 90% grant funded or 90% philanthropy funded,
And if there's any shock or if they lose a funder, that can put the organization under serious pressure and often results in cutting back on the impact that you're delivering. So for us, having a diversified mix of income streams has always been something that we've been focused on. And we say, you know, the income that We generate that really fuels our operations.
And then it's that allows us to focus the grants and the philanthropy that we get on growth and innovation. And we do believe it makes a better proposition for everyone. The businesses that we work with benefit from a much greater social impact working with us versus a commercial entity.
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Chapter 8: What are the different types of poverty addressed by FoodCloud?
A lot of the community partners, a lot of those connections that we made in the first few months are connections that are still with us and still supporting us to this day. So I think sometimes people are reluctant to talk about their idea because they feel like it's not fully formed yet. They haven't done enough research yet. They're not far along yet. They're worried someone else might take it.
There's loads of different reasons why people can hold back. But I think one of the most valuable things you can do is get out and speak to as many people as possible with an open mind about how you could improve the solution that you have. to really address the problem you want to solve. That's such great advice.
I remember my mum used to use this analogy that, you know, I need to put my own mask on before I can help anyone else, really trying to encourage me to go to university after high school. And because it was my mum saying that to me, I definitely wasn't going to do it and I went off. I went off and I went to Africa and spent all my money building houses for people and working over there.
And it was the best decision I ever made because it was just what was in my heart. It was the work that I wanted to do. And it was the kind of lifestyle I was trying to start. And I would have just withered up if I'd gone to Africa.
gone to university and that was my path you know but it's it's funny I really resonate with what you're saying there about going from no money to no money in your 20s is actually fine because you can really afford to be poor in your 20s and now at this age and I have two kids, the idea of suddenly having no money next year is very, very stressful and it's not something I'm ready to jump into.
And I would really struggle to do something like that or start an organization at this age with the commitments I've got.
Absolutely. And I always really admire people that do take that leap at a stage where it is a bigger risk because I do feel lucky that I was able to do it at that stage. You are on like the downside is you have a lot less experience and you're on a steeper learning curve than people who have had the opportunity to work in different companies or be part of different things.
But there are benefits to starting something at that stage and it's always worth a try. And as well, like if it doesn't work out, the process in itself is such a strong educational experience. And I do think you learn more and faster. And in a more unique way than you do sitting in a lecture theatre.
So if you start something and one year, three years, five years down the road, it doesn't work out and you end up doing something else. Ultimately, the education you get during that time will be nothing you could have experienced before.
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